Maverick (TV Series) - Notable Episodes

Notable Episodes

The first broadcast episode of Maverick, "War of the Silver Kings", was based on C. B. Glasscock's "The War of the Copper Kings", which relates the real-life adventures of copper mine speculator F. Augustus Heinze, a copper king who ultimately went to Wall Street. Huggins recalls in his Archive of American Television interview that this Warners-owned property was selected by the studio as the first episode in order to cheat him out of creator residuals.

Notable episodes of the series include "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" (in which Bret spends most of the acclaimed episode apparently relaxing in a rocking chair, calmly whittling and offhandedly assuring the inquisitive and derisively amused townspeople that he's "working on it" while Bart runs a complex sting operation to swindle a crooked banker who'd blithely pocketed Bret's deposit of $15,000—Garner notes in his memoir, The Garner Files, that he was given the choice of which role to play, and he chose the one where he spent the episode sitting down, even though it was a smaller part, because he'd been feeling tired and overworked; it was his favorite episode); "According to Hoyle" (the first appearance of Diane Brewster as roguish Samantha Crawford, a role she'd played earlier in an episode of another western TV series called Cheyenne); "The Saga of Waco Williams" with Wayde Preston and Louise Fletcher (which also drew the largest viewership of the series); "Gun-Shy" (a spoof of Gunsmoke); and "Duel at Sundown" (with Clint Eastwood as a fist-fighting and gun-slinging villain). In his Archive of American Television interview, Roy Huggins contends that the first half of The Sting was an uncredited restaging of "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres".

Jack Kelly's favorite episode was "Two Beggars On Horseback", a sweeping adventure that depicted a frenzied race between Bret and Bart to cash a check, the only time in the series that Kelly also wore a black hat, albeit briefly.

"Pappy" stands out as a unique episode, with James Garner playing Bret and Bart's father Beau, an important but previously unseen character always referred to throughout the run of the series as "Pappy". Bret and Bart were both constantly saying, "As my Pappy used to say" then reeling off some intriguing aphorism like "Work is fine for killing time but it's a shaky way to make a living." In this particular episode, Pappy was brought to life for the only time in the series by Garner, and Bret also winds up disguising himself as his own grey-haired, mustachioed father as part of the plotline. The split screen sequences with two Garners in the same shot were singled out by critics as especially interesting. Kelly also plays a dual role, briefly portraying old Beau's brother Bentley, or "Uncle Bent", as Bret calls him. Garner's Beau Maverick is not the same character as the Beau Maverick played by Roger Moore later in the series; Moore's Beau is the nephew of Garner's Beau as well as Bret and Bart's cousin; and Beau Maverick always referred to "Uncle Beau" (instead of calling him "Pappy"). In the studio tradition of casting their contract players, Troy Donahue plays the son of a long-time lover of Pappy.

The second episode of season four, "Hadley's Hunters", features brief crossovers from the Warner Bros. array of Western shows. Bart encounters Dan Troop (John Russell) and Johnny McKay (Peter Brown) from Lawman, Cheyenne Bodie (Clint Walker) from Cheyenne, Tom Brewster (Will Hutchins) from Sugarfoot, Bronco Layne (Ty Hardin) from Bronco, and Edd Byrnes from 77 Sunset Strip. Bart also walked into the office of Christopher Colt and found it empty. He noticed Colt's gun hung up on the wall, and his satchel covered in dust. This was an inside joke referring to Colt .45, another Warner Bros. western, recently cancelled. The climax finds Bart forced to use powerful oversized pistol.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.'s charming character Dandy Jim Buckley (Maverick minus the meticulous scruples) appears to especially superb effect in the epic "Stampede" and comedy of treachery "The Jail at Junction Flats". The latter episode features a memorable conclusion that offended many 1958 viewers. Zimbalist went on to play the lead in his own series, 77 Sunset Strip, after five appearances as Buckley. Huggins recruited Richard Long to fill the void as a similar character named "Gentleman Jack Darby", and both Buckley and Darby appear in "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", although not in the same scenes.

Many episodes are humorous while others are deadly serious, and in addition to purely original scripts, producer Roy Huggins drew upon works by writers as disparate as Louis Lamour and Robert Louis Stevenson to give the series breadth and scope. The Maverick brothers never stopped traveling, and the show was as likely to be set on a riverboat or in New Orleans as in a western desert or frontier saloon. Huggins quit the series at the end of the second season due to a life-threatening bout with pneumonia, and was succeeded by writer/producer Coles Trapnell, ushering in a gradual but sharp permanent decline in ratings.